Whenever there's a big story in the media look for the true story they're trying to distract you from

Friday, March 10, 2017

Spygate: America’s Political Police vs. Donald J. Trump

Deep State’s dirty tricks revealed

Deep State – the configuration of spy agencies, career bureaucrats, and overseas spooks whose murky omnipresence has been brought to light by President Trump’s contention that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor.

With his usual imprecision, Trump managed to confuse the issue by ascribing the surveillance to Barack Obama, and so naturally spokesmen for the former President had no trouble batting this charge away. But as a former Obama speechwriter put it: “I’d be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the [White House] ordered it.”

And then there’s the word “wiretapping”: this brings to mind the old-fashioned physical “bug” that our spooks used to plant on their target’s phone lines, installed in the dead of night. But that isn’t how it’s done anymore. As Edward Snowden revealed, the National Security Agency (NSA) scoops up everyone’s communications, and stores them in a database for later retrieval. Loosely-observed “rules” are supposed to make it hard (but not impossible) for the spooks to spy on American citizens, but the reality is that there are plenty of times when such information is scooped up “incidentally,” and in those cases the identities of those spied on must be redacted.

On January 19, the McClatchy news service reported on the “get Trump” campaign launched by US law enforcement agencies:

“The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said.

“The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said.”

To be clear: during the election, six law enforcement agencies were engaged in a systematic attempt to undermine the Trump campaign, at a certain point utilizing unredacted raw intelligence collected by the NSA and other agencies, all the while leaking like a sieve to their media camarilla.

“The Western European intelligence operations began in August, after the British government obtained information that people acting on behalf of Russia were in contact with members of the Trump campaign. Those details from the British were widely shared among the NATO allies in Europe. The Baltic nation has been gathering intelligence for at least that long, and has conducted surveillance of executives from the Trump Organization who were traveling in Europe.”

In a panic that their free ride would be over if Trump’s “America First” agenda was implemented, our European NATO “allies” worked in close coordination with the Washington cabal to subvert the US election process far more effectively than any Russian effort. And they didn’t need a FISA court to approve their spying on the Trump campaign.

Which brings up an important issue: there has been much ado about reports of a FISA court application, supposedly denied, and one that was narrowed and allegedly approved: the BBC, the Guardian, and the lunatic “reporter” Louise Mensch have all maintained that this was the case. Yet, as I have shown above, no such approval by the FISA court was ever required, although it would have a) made it much easier for the coup plotters to do their dirty work, and b) would have shielded them from any legal consequences. However, the fly in the ointment is that this would leave a paper trail that, once elected, Trump could simply declassify.

So the FISA issue is, I believe, a false trail, a distraction away from what really happened. They didn’t need the FISA court. They didn’t need a warrant. They simply opened a “back door” that, contrary to reports, had not been closed by the “USA Freedom Act,” and – unleashed by the relaxation of the rules previously governing dissemination of NSA intercepts – simply went through it.

Finally, we have another interesting “coincidence”: the brouhaha over NSA chief Admiral Michael Rogers, who top Obama administration officials wanted to fire, which started because Rogers traveled to Trump Tower to meet with the President-elect. The ostensible reasons given – various breaches of security – were odd: after all, why fire him just as Obama was leaving office? In short, the intensity of the campaign to fire him was out of all proportion to his alleged misdeeds. Aside from the security issue, the very fact that he was visiting Trump was supposedly a major issue: we were told “There’s only one President at a time.” But why shouldn’t someone who might be asked to continue to serve meet with the President-elect?

In retrospect, the visit – and the disproportionate anger it provoked from the Obama crowd – makes perfect sense. If the NSA was being used as a source for the campaign to delegitimize Trump, and build a case that the President-elect is a “Russian puppet,” as Hillary Clinton put it, then Rogers’ may have been trying to distance himself from the effort: “It wasn’t me, Boss!”

The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates. A national security apparatus that vacuums upall our communications and stores them for later retrieval has been utilized by political operatives to go after their enemies – and not even the President of the United States is immune. This is something that one might expect to occur in, say, Turkey, or China: that it is happening here, to the cheers of much of the media and the Democratic party, is beyond frightening.

The irony is that the existence of this dangerous apparatus – which civil libertarians have warned could and probably would be used for political purposes – has beenhailed by Trump and his team as a necessary and proper function of government. Indeed, Trump has called for the execution of the person who revealed the existence of this sinister engine of oppression – Edward Snowden. Absent Snowden’s revelations, we would still be in the dark as to the existence and vast scope of the NSA’s surveillance.

We hear all the time that what’s needed is an open and impartial “investigation” of Trump’s alleged “ties” to Russia. This is dangerous nonsense: does every wild-eyed accusation from embittered losers deserve a congressional committee armed with subpoena power bent on conducting an inquisition? Certainly not.

What must be investigated is the incubation of a clandestine political police force inside the national security apparatus, one that has been unleashed against Trump – and could be deployed against anyone.

This isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about preserving what’s left of our old republic. I don’t want to live in a country where anonymous spooks with access to my most personal information can collect it and release it to their friends in our despicable media – do you?